Stories and happenings in the life of a flight attendant written after my book.
To see some of my other Blogs of poetry and travel stories, click the link next to my profile photo, "View my complete profile."
All photos by Penguin Scott unless noted.

Monday, October 31, 2016

The Bell Rang

Well, that didn’t
go quite as planned. It started out fantastic. I was 100% committed.
I had planned...in fact, started doing so about 9 months ago, before
I even purchased this home. But I could see it all quickly going
downhill. My plans were not thorough enough. I'd miscalculated.

While not a complete failure,
and how could it have been for all the planning, this was not how I wanted my first
Halloween to go down in my new neighborhood. My reputation was on the
line here. The house had been vacant for over a year before I moved
and who knows what kind of people were living here before me? I had
to do well!

Penguin on Halloween

The real work began
about a month ago. I was the second house in the neighborhood to
decorate for Halloween. I would have done so much sooner, but I
didn’t want to be ‘that’ guy...the weird fellow who keeps to
himself, hardly seen, yet puts out the jack-o’lanterns and orange
lights just after the Forth of July. (I would have if I thought I
could get away with it.) Once I saw that first house put their
decorations out, it was on! Lights in the bushes, skulls, pumpkins,
bats and a scary cat.

A week ago, after
seeing some awesome party lights at a Halloween event I attended in
Portland, OR, I added white dancing spiders and green floating
witches that illuminated the front of my house. A few days ago I
added a witch’s head, an arm reaching out from the bushes, and
skulls on strings. I had a bat hanging from my porch light and 3
skulls on stakes, which lit up. And for the grand night, itself, I
added a strobe light just behind the jack-o’lanterns that have
kept watch over my yard from the living room windows the past month.

Just inside the
hallway I set up a small table on which I put a creepy table cloth, 2
more jack-o’-lanterns, a candelabra covered in spiders and a few
creepy grotesque faces with my bowl of treats. This year, I was
giving out packages of Danish cookies! I had enough for 50 little
ones; the little trick or treaters in their cute costumes, shyly (in
only some cases, as it would turn out) pressing forth their plastic pumpkins,
back packs or just plain old plastic grocery bags to gather their plunder of
tootsie rolls, jolly rogers, dots, sour patch kids and fun-sized
snickers to fill their lunch boxes until Christmas break, if they’re
lucky! All that and the Danish cookie, I was giving out.

My table and treats

I’ve not done this
in over 8 years. I’ve either lived in places inaccessible to kids
(I lived in a back yard in-law apartment for six years in Pacifica, CA) or for
7 years I worked at a haunted house every October and was never home
for Halloween. I’m out of practice. It’s a new neighborhood. I
was not prepared for the amount of garbed little ones, and a few bigger ones
in no costume at all. There were so many and they seemed to descend
like starved locusts.

The first bell rang
later than I was expecting; just after 7PM. It was a ninja and a
little princess. Dressed in a black hooded robe, I answered the door,
“You rang?” and acted like I had no idea that it was Halloween. Yeah,
I always dress like this and I always have a dish of treats at the
door! They loved it, though. And the next little dude, all of 7 years
of age, dressed in regular clothes but wearing the mask of an old
crotchety man (hello, mirror?) complimented my costume 5 times! He
was my favorite!

A very young Penguin as Batman

Then came the Batmen
and Supermen, an Incredible Hulk and an Elsa. There was a witch and
several zombies. Each of the little ones wearing skeleton shirts I
told, “You better eat your treats, you’re nothing but skin and
bones!” The helicopter parents were there with many of them,
keeping them safe, reminding them to say thank you, and in a few
cases having to queue them, “Say trick or treat!” I must have
been one of their first stops!

My cookies garnered
many warm responses, but were dwindling fast. They came in groups.
Each time the bell rang, there were 6, 9, or 12 kids. They traveled
in packs. Or is it a murder? No, I’m pretty sure that’s only
crows. It wasn’t 7:30 yet, and I was headed to the kitchen for the
rest of the bag of cookies. Not enough. Soon, the bowl only had 3
cookies left! I began to panic.

What now? I looked
through the pantry. I eyed tea sachets and packets of hot sauce.
(Well, this IS Texas!) I began to sweat. I could hear more children
coming down the street, see the SUVs and large pickup trucks slowly
creeping down with them to keep an eye on things. The dark side of me
began to think, the character that for so many years pulled the kind
of screams from men and women that you normally only hear in horror
movies, but this was no movie, it was me, a scary clown, looking at
them and screaming back, “What are we screaming for? CLOWNS? I HATE
clowns! Hehehehehe!” Being Whispers the Clown, making people scream and in some cases, wet their pants, was so therapeutic. It still is, when I get the chance...

Whispers the Clown, my alter ego

I remembered
the kid, Charlie Brown. Everyone loves him. Everyone remembers how he
went trick or treating and kept getting rocks. I could make the
children’s day, I could send them away to actually say, “I got a
rock. That weird guy that no one ever sees, who put out all the
creepy things in his yard the day after Valentine’s Day, he gave me
a rock.” But the sane part of me took over. I don’t take returns
and I know that chances are good that giving a rock would only mean
I’d be getting them back...and with shards of glass to have to
clean up, as well.

Back to the pantry,
the children, getting louder. I couldn’t turn my lights off just
yet, it wasn’t even 8. Eureka! There were 3 bags of brownie
brittle and 5 single sized bags of kettle corn. The bell rang. The
bell rang. Then a knock. Eager little things. A pirate, a police
officer, a parrot girl, 2 zombies, a princess and 2 skeletons...they
took all I had. I saw more a few houses down. Those packets of hot
sauce were starting to sound doable!

Back to the pantry.
I had a box of pumpkin-shaped cookies; individually wrapped. I also
had a box of chocolate chip granola bars. These were my little treats
I travel with for those early morning flights when there isn’t much
time for breakfast. Into the treat bowl they went. The pumpkin
cookies went first. Then I started handing out the granola bars. I
didn’t mention what I was putting in their treat bags. I didn’t
want to be known as the guy who ran out of candy too early and started giving
away odd items from all over the house (I actually eyed a cat toy for
about 1/100th of a second).

My house lit up at night

The bell rang, a
couple of middle school aged boys with really no costume at all were
standing before me. I silently threw the granola bars into their
bags, hoping they wouldn’t notice until they got home. Damn the
luck, as I closed the door, I heard the older boy exclaim, “He gave
me a 90 calorie granola bar!” I’d never noticed they were only 90
calories! But there, in the dark, in my front yard, he could
determine what I’d thrown into his bag, grabbed it, and the first
thing he noticed was 90 calories. That guy’s going far in life, let
me tell you!

I went back to the
living room and took a seat. My neighbor across the street was
entertaining a group I’d seen earlier. She closed the door and the
kids, parents in tow, walked down the street. The lights in the house went off. First the porch lights, then the upstairs lights
with the dragon in the window, then the inflatable pumpkin that had
been puffed up for the past 3 weeks deflated and was now flat on the
ground like a cow patty. They were done. I looked at my bowl and saw
my last 4 granola bars. The clock chimed. It was 8 o’clock.

I went outside and
looked up and down the street. Nothing. I was done. I had made it. I
turned off my light show of spiders and witches. I unplugged the
orange lights in the bushes and the 3 glowing skulls. I extinguished
the jack-o’lanterns and stopped the strobe. Finally, the front
porch light went off.

Witches and spiders on my house

From outside, I
could hear a groan and a small symphony of “Aww”s. I looked
through the peep hole and saw a couple with a cute little girl in a
ballerina outfit and her brother in a SWAT officer costume. I turned
the porch light back on, opened my door and heard them exclaim, “Yay,
he’s our hero, the best decorated house in all the land. His
costume is the most awesome costume. All hail the great one who
reveres Halloween and gives out the best treats. Behold the fall
gourds carefully carved and still glowing, not from fire within, but
from the sheer joy of celebrating the fall seasonal holiday of
Halloween. Yay, oh yay!”

OK, maybe some of
that was just in my head, and I apologized that all I had left were a few
more granola bars. But, hey, they’re only 90 calories each. I’ll
do better next year! I promise.